May 2017

Massive Escalator Installed at Victory Block G in Dallas

Victory Block G is a new 23-story residential tower being constructed by Archer Western in Dallas. The project also includes an eight-screen movie theatre on top of a 7-story parking garage, just adjacent to the residential tower. Access to the theatre is through an atrium, separated from the residential portion of the building, which serves the cinema.

From just after project award in January 2016, the team began looking at just how we were going to install the escalators into this atrium.

“We talked about several ideas including using the tower crane to lower them in, or hoists to raise them up but because there are beams spanning the atrium, either approach would not work due to the size of the units,” said Project Manager Dave Burns. Each unit has a length of 73 feet, 30 feet of rise and weighs in at more than 27,000 pounds.

The team worked with a local rigging contractor and our structural engineer to design a hoist beam system. The system consisted of large I-beams set on air-driven trolleys to allow us to movement across each of the four units. All connections were engineered and re-shored down to the ground as the structure was unable to support the necessary 40,000 pound loads being applied during the installation.

“The installation was unique as we had to install these units into the building from the side, rather than the top. We also assembled them off-site and trucked them to the job for installation in one piece,” said Burns.

During the installation, two cranes were used to pick each unit. Each rigging point had multiple rigging set-ups attached so the escalator could be passed from the crane to the first monorail hoist beam, then lower the unit, and pass it to the next. The operations was carefully planned and executed safely and successfully.
The project is currently topped out with the first set of residential units being completed on levels 1-10, which will be turned over to the owner in October.